You may know him as the father of taxonomy, but did you know that he was a physician?
Carl Linnaeus was born in a small village in Sweden on May 23, 1707. He was interested in botany from an early age. He spent 3 years studying, mainly in Holland, to get his medical doctor’s degree, and then turned his attention back to botany, then considered a branch of medicine due to the numerous pharmaceutical uses of plants.
Linnaeus then worked as a botanical curator and house physician for George Clifford, a director of the Dutch East India Company, at his country estate near Haarlem. His work during this time was quite prolific, generating 8 published books during three years abroad. Systema Naturae, published in 1735, was a work of only about a dozen pages that outlined a classification system (later well known as the Linnaean system) for the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms.
Nearly 300 years later, this system remains the basis for modern day nomenclature. National Geographic recently published a well written story about Linneaus in their June, 2007 issue. For the full article in National Geographic, please visit their website.
